4 dead as bus to U.S.-owned factory targeted in Juarez

Gang shoots up buses in Juarez; 4 deadAttack is first in 3 years on a U.S.-owned firm

DUDLEY ALTHAUS, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Published 5:30 am, Friday, October 29, 2010

MEXICO CITY — In the first attack of its kind in more than three years of gangland terror, gunmen in the border city of Ciudad Juarez opened fire early Thursday on two buses carrying employees of a U.S.-owned factory, killing four people and wounding 14 others.

The employees were heading home following their evening shift at about 1 a.m. when the killers struck near the small village of Caseta, near the Rio Grande southeast of Juarez. The assailants forced a man off one of the buses and then opened fire on the other occupants, investigators said.

The dead included three women and a man, all employees of Eagle Ottawa Leather, a firm headquartered in a Detroit suburb that makes upholstery for automobiles.

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State investigators and the trade group representing Juarez's 324 foreign-owned factories - called maquiladoras - said the attack appeared targeted at the man who was kidnapped rather than at Eagle Ottawa or its employees in general.

Weighing risks

Still, the attack marks the first time the wave of gangland violence has directly hit one of the foreign-owned firms anywhere in Mexico. And executives on both sides of the border were re-evaluating the risks Thursday.

"If in fact this is a new trend, it's not good for industry," said Nelson Balido, president of the San Antonio-based Border Trade Alliance, to which many of the companies with border factories belong. "Maquiladoras have not been directly attacked like this."

Eagle Ottawa managers did not respond to requests for comment at the company's headquarters or its offices in El Paso or Juarez.

State officials announced Thursday afternoon that they will increase police escorts and other security measures for the factories and their employees, especially those leaving night shifts.

All but two of those wounded in the attacks were released from the hospital by early afternoon, the state attorney general's office said.

Mexican officials claim that most of the more than 6,500 people killed in Juarez since fighting erupted in early 2008 have been gangsters or somehow related to the underworld.

But a rising number of innocents also have died, including 13 adolescents massacred at a Juarez house party last Friday and 15 others gunned down at a similar celebration in January. The parents of many of those victims, and likely of their killers, work in the foreign-owned factories.

"The criminals, in their murderous and irrational barbarity … kill without mercy or scruples," President Felipe Calderon said in a speech Wednesday, responding to a series of massacres nationwide in the past week that have killed more than 50 civilians. "Nothing justifies their actions."

Goods headed to U.S.

Juarez's assembly plants churn out car parts, electronics and other consumer goods, almost entirely for the U.S. market. The factories' more than 190,000 employees make up 60 percent of Ciudad Juarez's private sector payroll. Many assembly-line workers earn $100 or less for a full week's work.

Foreign-owned firms so far have been largely immune from Mexico's rising extortion plague, trade association officials and security consultants say. But they add that some Mexican employees, especially those with knowledge of merchandise shipments, occasionally have been targeted by gangsters.

"There has been a perceived immunity for North Americans operating in Mexico," said Daniel Johnson, an executive with Houston-based Medex Global Solutions, which provides security training and advice for companies operating internationally. "But in the past year we've seen that immunity fade away rather quickly.